Gluttony: The Morning After

It’s early in the morning on a day that I expect my children to sleep late. The house is quiet. I could be sleeping, but I’m not. And it’s not by choice.

Why, you may ask, am I squandering such a golden opportunity?

It’s because I have a tummy ache.

After weeks of eating a mostly raw, healthful diet with good food combining along with our detox, we were excited to have some of our old favorite not-so-good-for-us foods again. Not that we’d eat them all the time (we never did before, anyway), but I’m sure you understand.

So, last night we had a celebratory meal. I advertised on our Facebook page what we were having for dinner: a Thanksgiving style meal: turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potato, green beans, apricot/cranberry/pomegranate sauce, challah (freshly made with real flour), fresh grape juice. And apple crisp that we didn’t even eat since we were so full and it was too late.

It was really tasty. It was also a great example of gluttony, defined by Merriam-Webster as excess in eating and drinking; greedy or excessive indulgence.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all trying to tell you that you should never have such a celebratory meal. However, doing it frequently or finding a reason almost daily to have a “treat” is actually worse for you than having it once in a while. Your body can much more easily recover from a lot of bad stuff at once than a little each day. I discussed this in my post on Celebration Days vs. Regular Days.

Our dinner last night was not only made of completely cooked foods (with the exception of the grape juice, which was completely wasted nutritionally on top of all that other stuff in our stomachs), but it was combined poorly. We had too much meat and bread and potato…a tiny bit of green beans. Not good. Putting those things in at the same time was just asking for trouble. (Wanna know why? Read The Combo Platter: Eating Harmoniously-Proper Food Combining)

And so while I’m a little frustrated that I lost some sleep this morning, I’m glad my body functions well enough to react in a way that reminds me that this should not be a way of life. Not my life, anyway.

Are you a meat and potatoes person? I used to be. You can change this habit, one meal at a time. Start with dinners; how ever many per week you eat meat, lessen it by one. And how ever many of those left include potato/pasta/rice/any carbohydrate, lessen it by one. Try the meat with only vegetables. And lessen the amount of meat, making it more like the side dish than the main dish.

I love to hear of your changes and struggles with meal planning and health….Let me know how it goes!

One Reply to “Gluttony: The Morning After”

It’s so hard to get used to eating less meat! I grew up eating beef or chicken almost every night for dinner. At first, if I had a dinner meal without meat, I just didn’t feel satisfied. Nothing was filling enough. But over time (I mean, lots of time, like years) I got used to it, and now am completely fine without it for any particular meal. Thanks.